Hello. I have a question maybe someone who has a similar situation can help answer. My son is adopted. For reasons I will not go into here to protect my child’s privacy and his biological family, the biological family at their insistance does not have contact. My husband and I have recently been approached about another adoption with a different family in which the family wants an open situation. We are totally fine with that. My question is how to handle it when our son is older and asks why his other adopted sibling gets to see their first family and he can’t. Does anyone have a situation of adoption where one child doesn’t really see the first family for whatever reason and another does? How do you handle this in adoption situations?
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Hello. I clicked to read your topic because I am interested in the same thing.
My daughter (8) is in a full open adoption with both her birthparents. My son’s (he’s 6) birthfather has not ever had contact with his birthfather and his birthmother has been unavaible for almost 4 years. We want to make this all right for our children.
They way we have handled it involves two strategies.
1. Daughter’s birthparents include Son in everything (they do so happily). They understand the situation and do everything they can to make things right for both. This doesn’t mean they don’t get private time with Daughter; just that Son is made to feel special, too. Both birthparents are terrific at this.
2. Hey. This is how it is. Part of our job as parents is to get our children to accept their reality. This means that we don’t wring our hands about the absence of Son’s birthparents, nor do we pretend that it’s nothing. Somewhere in between is, “It would be nice to see them, and maybe it will happen some day. I bet they love you very much and would be here if they could.”
That’s the best I’ve got. I will watch this thread to see other ideas.
Best wishes to you with this new situation!
Similar situation for us. Although both of my kids’ birthmoms are involved in some way in their life, my daughter’s birthmom is much more involved. They’re very different people in different stages of life, with totally different factors affecting their involvement. As for my kids’ birthfathers, one denies paternity, and the other has a history of violence, so I’m still trying to process how we’ll deal with talking about that. My kids are very young (1 and 3) and we are generally honest with them on a level that’s developmentally appropriate. We think, pray, and talk it through. That’s all we know how to do.
I’d love to hear how others are handling this.